Dogs, Homework and New Jersey’s $400 Million Mistake

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has been promoted as a model of effective Republican governance, has been faced this week with a clerical error that prevented New Jersey from being in the running for a Race to the Top grant of $400 million. The governor had initially defended his education commissioner Bret Schundler, saying that the state had tried to give the federal government the information they needed after the mistake was uncovered. It was federal bureaucrats fault, Christie initially argued, for not being more flexible. But then this video came out:

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The video, according to the governor’s office, contradicted the Schundler story. “He can’t lie to me,” one anonymous official quotes the governor saying. So Christie asked Schundler to resign. Schundler declined and was fired, allowing him to collect unemployment insurance. “I have a mortgage to pay and a daughter about to start college,” he said, according to the Associated Press.